I'm newbie, and I'm looking for a cool navigation line for my ocean background. For example, http://www.cartographersguild.com/album.php?albumid=174&attachmentid=21079 This one looks simple but great, I need something like this.

Ascension

05-16-2011, 03:48 PM

I don't know of any pre-made rhumb lines with compass. Mostly we just take a compass (or make our own) and put our own lines in. That said, there are some rhumb lines in the resources section and some compasses as well so grab some then stick em together how you want em.

Hai-Etlik

05-26-2011, 02:23 AM

I made a little Ruby program to generate rhumb lines for portolans like this, you can find it here:

You can control various parameters with it like number of points, compass rose design and placement, line style, etc.

Or if you are OK with 16 points and a fixed style, or don't want to install Ruby and figure out my little command line program, here's a pre-generated file. I've included just about everything (A circumcircle, bisector lines, and Roses at each vertex.) so just delete the components you don't need.

http://hai-etlik.deviantart.com/art/Portolan-Chart-Lines-176848667

Remember that the map needs to either be large scale (Covering an area no larger than a very small continent or large sea) or in Normal Mercator Projection, otherwise rhumb lines would be visibly curved, not strait. You can still put them in as a decorative element, but it's wrong and will make all the cartographers cry.